I get to work in alot of vertical markets because of what I do. Today I was with two guys who work in and around the motor trade. We were looking at creating some software that can incentivise your existing base to increase their spend by setting ‘uplifted’ sales targets. It was something I had never seen before. So here’s how it works. You create a campaign and lets say that campaign runs for three months starting tomorrow (02/07/2008). You then select what customers you want to add to that campaign. Then using historical financial data you get the sales figures for each customer for the same period in the previous year (or go back 2,3,4 years). You then apply a percentage uplift to each customers historic sales and this then becomes their target for the current campaign. Now where it gets really interesting is you also take your current gross profit figure and then apply that to the uplifted sales figure. What this will do is tell you how much in actual revenue you will receive from each customer if they hit target.

Lets look at an example. Customer X has sales for the same period of the previous year of £100K. We use an uplift of 20% which means that customer has to hit £120K of sales during the current campaign. If our average gross profit is 30% then we make £6K if they hit target. So of course we can incentivise the customers to hit this target with some really compelling (and quite expensive) prizes in the knowledge of how much money there is to play with. And of course if they dont hit the target they dont get the prize!

The flippent answer would be one that generates a definative and repeatable return on investment! There is going to be a cost for any email marketing, whether it be the design of the layout of the email if you need to make it look enticing, or using a third party service which charges a subscription fee. Before you do anything though consider;

• How targetted are the prospects on the list?
• How well written is the copy? Are you starting with a compelling, benefit oriented headline?
• How compelling is the actual offer?

Always remember to do small scale tests first. if you have a list of 10,000 prospects why not come up with two different emails (same offer, different copy in the email) and send email A to 100, and B to another 100 and compare the results.

If you are going to use a third party service then check they offer costs on a ‘per subscriber’ and not ‘per email’ basis. If you are being charged per subscriber it means you can email the list several times for no additional cost. One great service which does that and offers a whole lot more besides is GetResponse

There has been a huge uptake in customer relationship management (CRM) systems over the last couple of years. All businesses from small to large have been clamouring to select, buy and implement CRM as it is seen as a ‘must-have’. But I wonder, how many businesses have actually measured their return on that investment? How is your CRM system delivering benefit not just in operational process but in additional sales and new customers? Sure your CRM will tell you how many leads have been won, the status of those leads, which salesperson brought in that lead. It will also tell you how many and the potential value of any opportunities arising from that lead. But of course the real crux of the matter is you need to measure/test/refine/repeat the effectiveness of your campaigns.

And there lies the problem, whilst most CRM systems on the market allow you to create a campaign against a list of customers it is the segmentation of your customers that falls down. Why? because even if you do have an integrated CRM and financials system the chances are you cannot create what I would term as dynamic campaigns. I had this very request a few weeks ago from a Sage CRM customer. “We want to be able to create a campaign based around customers who have bought product x”. Can the system do it? No! Can it be made do it? Absolutely. Here are 4 examples, from hundreds of possible, dynamic campaigns you could be using (but probably won’t be);

• Customers who bought product x
• Customers who have spent more than (or less than) x pounds, dollars, euros
• Customers who have bought within the last 180 days but not within the last 90 days
• Customers who have only bought once from you

So the key is getting at your financials data and using it to create customer segments that are meaningful (and hopefully responsive!) to an offer in the campaign.

This is an often asked question and is a constant challenge for start-ups/small businesses on a tight budget. Having spoken to many SME business owners the same word keeps cropping up…..Referrals.

Why? well for a start the cost of acquisition is virtually nil, unless of course you have had to provide some form of incentive to get the referral. Secondly you have been recommended so your prospect hasn’t been given the hard sell but has received a more gentle approach. You can actively seek out referrals, the marketing guru Jay Abraham actually wrote a book that details 93(!) referral systems that you could, and should look to implement in your business.

The other area to look at is existing business. How often do you communicate with your customers? Do you communicate with your customers? What triggers do you have in place to monitor if a regular buyer stops buying? Running a business is a time-consuming thing and our best intention is to make regular contact but this normally slips. Many business owners ask “Won’t my customers get fed up with me keep sending them stuff?”. Potentially, yes, but you can minimise this. How? Make sure your communications are relevant, informative with a genuine and compelling offer.